not everyone in the arab world is evil as you seem to believe. You misunderstand, I was not espousing my personal opinion about Arab countries (although I wouldn't risk travel to these countries either), but rather the public perception of those countries and as anyone in the PR business will tell you, image is everything whether it is, strictly speaking, true or not. The matter is further complicated in this case by the fact that the perceived danger is something that can neither be proved nor disproved which adds to the uncertainty and compounds the fears people have about traveling in these countries. The perceived risk, uncertainty, and worst case scenarios are more than many tourists are willing to accept as reasonable hazards.
But tourists "should be scared to death of visiting Arab countries"? Oh please. Well then, we will all look forward to the pictures from your next upcoming trip to say, Saudi Arabia or Yemen. No doubt you will be proudly proclaiming that you are an American while traveling in these countries, in order to show us Americans that we are just off base in our perception of the risk, or in other words...you first.
Fewer and fewer people go to Egypt to see the pyramids There is a reason for that and it has nothing to do with copyright or newer monumental construction projects in neighboring Arab countries and that is the image that westerners in general and Americans in particular have about Arab countries from what they see in the terrorist beheading videos, the stonnings of women in the streets, and the unruley mobs chanting "death to America". Tourists are scared to death of visiting Arab countries and they should be. If the Eygptians want to attract more tourists to their country then they have to do something about the terrorist image that is being solidified in the west. Does anyone else remember the episode of 30 Days where Morgan Spurlock asks people what is the first word that comes into their mind when he says the word "muslim"? The fact that Ayman Al-Zawahiri (aka the Eygtpian doctor and number 2 man of Osama) gets mentioned just about every time Al Qaeda gets mentioned in the news doesn't help. The Eygptians, the Saudis, the Jordanians and other Arab countries need to do more publically to counteract the negative PR moves being made by the terrorists or all but the most adventurous tourists might stay away permanently.
It is the holidays, most of us aren't hovering over Slashdot like we normally do, but on a somewhat different note,
Why does Dune and its subsequent novels always get the low-budget treatment whenever they are done for film or miniseries? The sci-fi channel stuff is passable in most cases, the acting is generally good, but the sets and the costumes suffer tremendously. How hard is it to film in an actual desert? Computer generated sand looks TERRIBLE and what is with the multicolor still suits that look nothing like the natural environment? Dune has been done badly so many times now that one wonders if it will EVER get the Steve Jackson treatment ala LOTR...sigh well we can hope I suppose.
On the bright side, oil will be at least a 1000 dollars a barrel. No doubt you are backing that up by locking in some "low" prices on long term oil futures contracts with your own money right? I mean, who wouldn't want to act on such valuable information if they were privy to a "sure thing" in the commodities markets?
IMHO, the government should not use the power of taxation in a misguided attempt to compel people to change their ways. They are always trying to tell people what it is that they really want (i.e. you want to use public transportation not drive your car OR you want to buy CFL lightbulbs not incandescent bulbs, etc) when in fact it is the people who decide what it is that they want in the marketplace. The people who advocate increased taxes, more social welfare, and other socialist goals suffer from the misconception that it is possible to do good with other people's money without thinking about how that money must first be taken from them via the coercive power of the state (i.e. force) through taxation. If you want people to make the "right" decisions then advocate for the government to quit regulating the electricity market, subsidizing petroleum, and handing out corporate wellfare to agribusinesses in the form of farm supports and let prices find their natural level in the marketplace. People want the government to intervene without realizing that it was government intervention which very often caused the problems in the first place. Their solution is more of the same...government intervention, but that just triggers more and more interventions to make good the effects of their previous interventions.
If we want people to start conserving electricity, potable water, or other commodities that are in short supply then we should encourage the government to stop making these commodities artificially cheap and encouraging over consumption.
Spend your own money as you wish, but don't tax other people and tell them that you know how to spend their money better than they do, that is the height of hubris and intellectual arrogance.
Maybe some people see egregious severance packages as a "good business decision" but I cannot in good conscience and reasoning even see that. Pay CEO's less and treat them like any employee... bad at your job, 'You're Fired'(tm). You could try that, but it would not be without consequences. In business one must consider all of the costs, including the opportunity costs, when making a decision.
There are a limited number of people, compared to the population at large, who are capable of profitably managing a large corporation, or indeed any large organization, consistently over the long run. In the case of a corporation profitable means maximizing value for the owners (shareholders in a public corporation) where value is generally, although not always, returned to the owners in terms of profit. If you fire the CEO and have security escort him out of the building then who among his peer group is going to want to come work for you as his fired colleagues replacement? Do you think the replacement, whoever he or she might be, will want extra money or guarantees because you unceremoniously fired the last CEO without severance? You bet. So all you have really succeeded in doing by giving the outgoing CEO rough treatment, whether he deserved it or not, is increasing massively your future executive recruiting costs.
Now, you might argue that, "regular employees are treated that way so why not the CEO?", to which I respond that CEOs (capable ones anyway) do not grow on trees. They take longer to find, longer to recruit, longer to train, and if a disgruntled employee can cost the company money, just imagine what a disgruntled CEO can do.
If you don't like the policies of a public corporation then buy shares in that corporation, attend the shareholder meetings, and advocate for proxy votes on issues related to the governance of that corporation, but don't complain about the collective decisions of other owners who are interested in maximizing their profit, not in any way with perceived "fairness" with CEO golden parachutes. The golden parachute allows all parties involved to cut their loses on sunk costs and part amicably without unnecessary destruction of shareholder value.
If the CEO really was that bad then he will probably never work again anyway, at least not as a CEO, but at least your company will have less trouble recruiting a competent replacement.
The problem is that most people just do what they want with their DVDs and CDs until somebody knocks on their door with a service for a lawsuit. It then shocks people to find out that what they have being doing all along is technically not lawful (i.e. using the burning software that came with the Dell PC for Christmas last year to burn mix CDs for their friends and family). It doesn't occur to them that there is even a problem until it smacks them upside the head like a big wet fish. Remember, it took a campaign of ridiculous lawsuits against grandmothers and children to even make file-sharing a blip on their consumer radar and people continue to do it anyway. People are working hard enough just to make ends meet these days without worrying about an esoteric, to them anyway, issue like copyright. You might as well discuss the relative merits of method delegates vs inner classes with your garbage men for all of the interest you will generate by pushing this issue in public. Their eyes just glaze over when you mention DRM, DMCA, and other technical jargon in response to why they cannot make a copy of that Disney DVD on VHS so that their kids can destroy it without damaging the source DVD.
The RIAA is just about the only business entity that I can think of that is dead set against giving consumers what they want and sues their customers when they try and satisfy that want on their own.
Yes, but just think of all those great-sounding legal ringtones playing over a $0.10 paper cone cell phone speaker, surely the burned "pirate" mix cd playing on my stereo system doesn't sound half as good because everyone knows that "pirated" music sounds atrocious...yeah right.
I'm wondering if there are similar problems here. Hence, the "in for a penny in for a pound" argument. Your modern house is already full of plastics, insulation, and all sorts of other materials that would be noxious or even toxic if your house were to burn so NOT adding solar panels simply because they might be toxic when they burn too is sort of pointless. You aren't really increasing your overall risk much, beyond what it otherwise would be anyway, by adding solar panels to your home. Now maybe you live in a natural adobe home or a mud hut, but for the rest of us this line or reasoning is valid.
Where are they going to sell their $21 million in annual IP infringement? The US will almost certainly attempt to bully potential customers of Antiguan copies of American DVDs into not buying. Is the local demand in Antigua for US copyrighted goods equal to $21 million per year? Maybe, but they will probably have some trouble trying to sell these warez outside of Antigua.
I think it's fine to speed if everyone around you is going close to the same speed. You might think so, but in the state where I live that is a common question on our driving test and the answer is always 'no'. Now, I am not saying that I agree with that, I agree with the general sentiment in this thread that irregular, dangerous, or irresponsible driving should be ticketed instead of simply speeding, but that is the way things are in a lot of states. If you try the "everyone was going that speed" excuse when you get pulled over then the officer is likely to respond with something like "there are many fish in the ocean, but today I caught you." The laws create an incentive for people to behave in ways that cause more traffic while driving because the laws are geared towards maximizing the safety of the least competent driver (although sometimes they don't even succeed in that rather modest goal) and not improving the flow of traffic.
Ask yourself, are drivers who are already so agitated by the delays on the regular highway that they tailgate until the break clear going to be calmer once they exit your "traffic calming" obstacle course? Of course not, they are going to romp on the gas to make up for lost time and vent their frustration in a burst of excessive speed. Traffic calming is a euro-hippie idea based upon how people would like the world to be and not how it actually is.
Couldn't the turn signals simply be wired to the steering wheel to turn on automatically when the wheel is turned past a certain number of degrees? What are turn signals used for anyway? To let other drivers know that you are going to alter the course of your vehicle. Now, there might be some cases, a curvy mountain road for example, where the turn signals would be going off just on regular driving, but seriously that can hardly be worse then people turning on their blinker and leaving it on while going straight because they are zoning out OR just never using them in the first place.
if everyone slowed to 60 or so, but KEPT MOVING knowing, there wouldn't be the daily 15-20 minute delay every single day at this point. Yes, but if you all went 60 then someone could save even more time by being selfish and going 90 to shoot past all of you and into the clear. The problem with your scheme is that it requires everyone to personally sacrifice their own selfish interests and cooperate to achieve a better collective result. As long as there are asshats out there who take advantage of your generosity, the situation will not improve.
Generally a later model used version, although once in a while one encounters an oldster driving a gas dinosaur or land battleship dating back to the Kennedy administration of which they are very likely the original owner. A truly frightening prospect when one considers the large mass of such a vehicle, the amount of pollutants spewed by such an inefficient car (it probably hasn't had a tune-up in decades), and the generally poor handling of the vehicle combined with their decreased vision and increased reaction times.
Is it idiotic to do what is best of your own self interest? The answer is more complicated than you might think, it depends upon what your adversaries do. This situation sounds very similar to the prisoners dilemma or indeed any other situation where individuals acting in their own self interest collectively reach a worse result (for each of them individually) than would otherwise have occurred if they cooperated instead of taking the greedy approach (i.e the Tragedy of the Commons).
It doesn't really matter if they produce toxic fumes when burning (most probably noxious but not necessarily toxic or even poisonous ) since (a) they are probably outside anyway (i.e. on your roof or out in the yard), (b) there are plenty of other things in a modern home already that would be equally noxious or toxic when burned such as the insulation in the walls and attic (i.e. in for a penny in for a pound), and (c) do you plan to hang around inside your burning house while inhaling all of the wonderfully noxious fumes or will you be getting out just as quickly as you possibly can?
I would be more concerned about the durability of the product and its ability to maintain production of the rated wattage over a long enough period of time to justify the initial capital equipment costs rather than whether or not they produce nasty smoke and gases when burning.
If you are not comfortable with plastering your files all over the web then you should be using a TrueCrypt encrypted volume for your sensitive data and a hidden volume for your really sensitive data. In an age where the government can listen in on your phone calls without a warrant, seize your property without due process, and detain you basically indefinitely because they don't like you the right to privacy is a one that you have to take proactive steps to protect. Apparently the constitution in general, and the bill of rights in particular, was run through the shredder after 9/11 and USA PATRIOT and the majority of the American people couldn't care less as long as they can still watch their reality television, read their gossip columns, and purchase lots of cheap imports at the local strip mall to load into their gas guzzling SUV.
It has been my experience, having attended my fair share of mandatory IT training workshops, that they are at best inefficient when it comes to learning new materials well (i.e. too many people of various skill and knowledge levels attending to meet the needs of everyone or even most of the attendees) and at worst, which occurs more often than not, they are a complete waste of time. This wastefulness is often further compounded by the fact that training workshops in general, and IT training workshops in particular, are very expensive with costs as high as several thousand dollars for a 1-2 hour session not unheard of. I find that I work better with well written books, self guided research on developer sites with Google, and a little bit of prototyping and for much less money than attending workshops. There may be other people, the so-called audio visual learners perhaps, for whom the workshop would be of greater benefit, but for me self study with the occasional resort to the newsgroups, developer sites, or my books to have a question answered is much more productive. However, to be fair to IT workshops I have heard that training workshops in other fields, real estate and business for example, suffer from many of the same problems so perhaps the problem is not peculiar to IT workshops, but rather indicative of a larger problem with the modern Power Point driven blowhard-jamborees that pass for workshops and conferences these days.
If you absolutely must attend this type of training and you have a choice (i.e. it is a job requirement) then I would suggest laboratory or other hands on courses where you at least open up the IDE and do some hacking around and if you don't like the presenter or the material then, well, there is always Slashdot isn't there?
I think part of that may stem from how the costs are incurred. The collective amount lost to fraud is quite large, on the order of billions of dollars, but the amount lost for each individual case is probably fairly small, probably on the order of a few thousand dollars or so on average. Now, given that it takes a certain fixed amount of legwork to track each fraud to its source and punish those responsible, most fraud cases are not large enough to justify those fixed costs. The investigations and prosecutions are most probably reserved for those cases which are individually large enough to justify the costs. So what we have here is really death by a thousand cuts. The individual transactions are generally too small to get worked up about tracking down the fraudsters while the collective losses from all fraudulent transactions remain quite large.
I think the grandparent has seen one too many episodes of the X-Files. Perhaps we should ask him whether the moon landings were a hoax as well? Or then again, perhaps not, we might deserve the answer just for asking.
Slashdot Mirror
It is the holidays, most of us aren't hovering over Slashdot like we normally do, but on a somewhat different note,
Why does Dune and its subsequent novels always get the low-budget treatment whenever they are done for film or miniseries? The sci-fi channel stuff is passable in most cases, the acting is generally good, but the sets and the costumes suffer tremendously. How hard is it to film in an actual desert? Computer generated sand looks TERRIBLE and what is with the multicolor still suits that look nothing like the natural environment? Dune has been done badly so many times now that one wonders if it will EVER get the Steve Jackson treatment ala LOTR...sigh well we can hope I suppose.
IMHO, the government should not use the power of taxation in a misguided attempt to compel people to change their ways. They are always trying to tell people what it is that they really want (i.e. you want to use public transportation not drive your car OR you want to buy CFL lightbulbs not incandescent bulbs, etc) when in fact it is the people who decide what it is that they want in the marketplace. The people who advocate increased taxes, more social welfare, and other socialist goals suffer from the misconception that it is possible to do good with other people's money without thinking about how that money must first be taken from them via the coercive power of the state (i.e. force) through taxation. If you want people to make the "right" decisions then advocate for the government to quit regulating the electricity market, subsidizing petroleum, and handing out corporate wellfare to agribusinesses in the form of farm supports and let prices find their natural level in the marketplace. People want the government to intervene without realizing that it was government intervention which very often caused the problems in the first place. Their solution is more of the same...government intervention, but that just triggers more and more interventions to make good the effects of their previous interventions.
If we want people to start conserving electricity, potable water, or other commodities that are in short supply then we should encourage the government to stop making these commodities artificially cheap and encouraging over consumption.
Spend your own money as you wish, but don't tax other people and tell them that you know how to spend their money better than they do, that is the height of hubris and intellectual arrogance.
Now, you might argue that, "regular employees are treated that way so why not the CEO?", to which I respond that CEOs (capable ones anyway) do not grow on trees. They take longer to find, longer to recruit, longer to train, and if a disgruntled employee can cost the company money, just imagine what a disgruntled CEO can do.
If you don't like the policies of a public corporation then buy shares in that corporation, attend the shareholder meetings, and advocate for proxy votes on issues related to the governance of that corporation, but don't complain about the collective decisions of other owners who are interested in maximizing their profit, not in any way with perceived "fairness" with CEO golden parachutes. The golden parachute allows all parties involved to cut their loses on sunk costs and part amicably without unnecessary destruction of shareholder value.
If the CEO really was that bad then he will probably never work again anyway, at least not as a CEO, but at least your company will have less trouble recruiting a competent replacement.
It could have been worse, your names both could have been Michael Bolton...
The problem is that most people just do what they want with their DVDs and CDs until somebody knocks on their door with a service for a lawsuit. It then shocks people to find out that what they have being doing all along is technically not lawful (i.e. using the burning software that came with the Dell PC for Christmas last year to burn mix CDs for their friends and family). It doesn't occur to them that there is even a problem until it smacks them upside the head like a big wet fish. Remember, it took a campaign of ridiculous lawsuits against grandmothers and children to even make file-sharing a blip on their consumer radar and people continue to do it anyway. People are working hard enough just to make ends meet these days without worrying about an esoteric, to them anyway, issue like copyright. You might as well discuss the relative merits of method delegates vs inner classes with your garbage men for all of the interest you will generate by pushing this issue in public. Their eyes just glaze over when you mention DRM, DMCA, and other technical jargon in response to why they cannot make a copy of that Disney DVD on VHS so that their kids can destroy it without damaging the source DVD.
The RIAA is just about the only business entity that I can think of that is dead set against giving consumers what they want and sues their customers when they try and satisfy that want on their own.
What happens when your rapidly flashing strobe-like brake lights induce a seizure in another driver who then causes an accident?
Where are they going to sell their $21 million in annual IP infringement? The US will almost certainly attempt to bully potential customers of Antiguan copies of American DVDs into not buying. Is the local demand in Antigua for US copyrighted goods equal to $21 million per year? Maybe, but they will probably have some trouble trying to sell these warez outside of Antigua.
Ask yourself, are drivers who are already so agitated by the delays on the regular highway that they tailgate until the break clear going to be calmer once they exit your "traffic calming" obstacle course? Of course not, they are going to romp on the gas to make up for lost time and vent their frustration in a burst of excessive speed. Traffic calming is a euro-hippie idea based upon how people would like the world to be and not how it actually is.
Couldn't the turn signals simply be wired to the steering wheel to turn on automatically when the wheel is turned past a certain number of degrees? What are turn signals used for anyway? To let other drivers know that you are going to alter the course of your vehicle. Now, there might be some cases, a curvy mountain road for example, where the turn signals would be going off just on regular driving, but seriously that can hardly be worse then people turning on their blinker and leaving it on while going straight because they are zoning out OR just never using them in the first place.
or elderly in the largest Lincoln they could find
Generally a later model used version, although once in a while one encounters an oldster driving a gas dinosaur or land battleship dating back to the Kennedy administration of which they are very likely the original owner. A truly frightening prospect when one considers the large mass of such a vehicle, the amount of pollutants spewed by such an inefficient car (it probably hasn't had a tune-up in decades), and the generally poor handling of the vehicle combined with their decreased vision and increased reaction times.
Is it idiotic to do what is best of your own self interest? The answer is more complicated than you might think, it depends upon what your adversaries do. This situation sounds very similar to the prisoners dilemma or indeed any other situation where individuals acting in their own self interest collectively reach a worse result (for each of them individually) than would otherwise have occurred if they cooperated instead of taking the greedy approach (i.e the Tragedy of the Commons).
It doesn't really matter if they produce toxic fumes when burning (most probably noxious but not necessarily toxic or even poisonous ) since (a) they are probably outside anyway (i.e. on your roof or out in the yard), (b) there are plenty of other things in a modern home already that would be equally noxious or toxic when burned such as the insulation in the walls and attic (i.e. in for a penny in for a pound), and (c) do you plan to hang around inside your burning house while inhaling all of the wonderfully noxious fumes or will you be getting out just as quickly as you possibly can?
I would be more concerned about the durability of the product and its ability to maintain production of the rated wattage over a long enough period of time to justify the initial capital equipment costs rather than whether or not they produce nasty smoke and gases when burning.
If you are not comfortable with plastering your files all over the web then you should be using a TrueCrypt encrypted volume for your sensitive data and a hidden volume for your really sensitive data. In an age where the government can listen in on your phone calls without a warrant, seize your property without due process, and detain you basically indefinitely because they don't like you the right to privacy is a one that you have to take proactive steps to protect. Apparently the constitution in general, and the bill of rights in particular, was run through the shredder after 9/11 and USA PATRIOT and the majority of the American people couldn't care less as long as they can still watch their reality television, read their gossip columns, and purchase lots of cheap imports at the local strip mall to load into their gas guzzling SUV.
It has been my experience, having attended my fair share of mandatory IT training workshops, that they are at best inefficient when it comes to learning new materials well (i.e. too many people of various skill and knowledge levels attending to meet the needs of everyone or even most of the attendees) and at worst, which occurs more often than not, they are a complete waste of time. This wastefulness is often further compounded by the fact that training workshops in general, and IT training workshops in particular, are very expensive with costs as high as several thousand dollars for a 1-2 hour session not unheard of. I find that I work better with well written books, self guided research on developer sites with Google, and a little bit of prototyping and for much less money than attending workshops. There may be other people, the so-called audio visual learners perhaps, for whom the workshop would be of greater benefit, but for me self study with the occasional resort to the newsgroups, developer sites, or my books to have a question answered is much more productive. However, to be fair to IT workshops I have heard that training workshops in other fields, real estate and business for example, suffer from many of the same problems so perhaps the problem is not peculiar to IT workshops, but rather indicative of a larger problem with the modern Power Point driven blowhard-jamborees that pass for workshops and conferences these days.
If you absolutely must attend this type of training and you have a choice (i.e. it is a job requirement) then I would suggest laboratory or other hands on courses where you at least open up the IDE and do some hacking around and if you don't like the presenter or the material then, well, there is always Slashdot isn't there?
Why can't they just follow the money?
I think part of that may stem from how the costs are incurred. The collective amount lost to fraud is quite large, on the order of billions of dollars, but the amount lost for each individual case is probably fairly small, probably on the order of a few thousand dollars or so on average. Now, given that it takes a certain fixed amount of legwork to track each fraud to its source and punish those responsible, most fraud cases are not large enough to justify those fixed costs. The investigations and prosecutions are most probably reserved for those cases which are individually large enough to justify the costs. So what we have here is really death by a thousand cuts. The individual transactions are generally too small to get worked up about tracking down the fraudsters while the collective losses from all fraudulent transactions remain quite large.
I think the grandparent has seen one too many episodes of the X-Files. Perhaps we should ask him whether the moon landings were a hoax as well? Or then again, perhaps not, we might deserve the answer just for asking.